Is apatite radioactive?
Not by formula: no IMA apatite carries uranium or thorium. The USGS gives 0.001–0.01% uranium as typical of igneous apatite, 10–100 ppm; fossil bone nears 1%.
Not by formula. Apatite is a group name, and its three IMA members, fluorapatite, hydroxylapatite and chlorapatite, contain no uranium or thorium. Real apatite carries traces: USGS Professional Paper 314-D (1958) gives 0.001–0.01% uranium as typical of igneous apatite, 10 to 100 ppm, against 47.15% in torbernite. Fossil bone and phosphate pebbles can approach 1%.
In short
- The formula check. The September 2026 IMA-CNMNC Master List has no apatite row; three names end in -apatite, all Rn, 2010 s.p.: Ca5(PO4)3F, Ca5(PO4)3(OH) and Ca5(PO4)3Cl. A script finds no uranium or thorium in any of them, and none of the three Handbook of Mineralogy sheets prints a radioactivity statement.
- The measured traces. Altschuler, Clarke and Young (1958), USGS Professional Paper 314-D: “Apatite contains only traces of uranium.” Uranium typically makes up 0.001 to 0.01% of primary igneous apatite and 0.005 to 0.02% of sedimentary marine apatite; marine reworked apatite reaches as much as 0.1%.
- The torbernite yardstick. Torbernite is 47.15% uranium by mass. Worked, an apatite at 0.01% uranium needs about 4,715 g to hold the uranium in 1 g of ideal torbernite; at 0.001%, about 47 kg. The trace is real, and thousands to tens of thousands of times below a uranium mineral.
- Documented failure: when apatite is not typical. The USGS lists a fossil bone from Miles City, Montana, at 0.83% uranium, and says isolated fossil bones or phosphate pebbles may contain almost 1%. Its rare-earth-rich apatite from Mineville, New York, gave 0.079%, and the paper reports as much as 0.38% thorium in apatite from Mineville. A label reading apatite does not settle a fossil or a rare-earth-rich specimen.
- Not advice. This page gives no dose, count rate or handling instruction. The general question is on is my mineral radioactive; this page is not health, safety or radiation-protection advice.
| Material (as the USGS describes it) | Uranium, % (as printed) | ppm (worked) | mg per 100 g (worked) | Mass holding the U of 1 g torbernite (worked) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Primary igneous apatite, typical range (abstract) | 0.001–0.01 | 10–100 | 1–10 | 47,148–4,715 g |
| Apatite, magnetite deposit, Durango, Mexico (Table 5) | 0.0009 | 9 | 0.9 | 52,386 g |
| Apatite, alkali syenite, Renfrew, Ontario (Table 5) | 0.0022 | 22 | 2.2 | 21,431 g |
| Sedimentary marine apatite, typical range (abstract) | 0.005–0.02 | 50–200 | 5–20 | 9,430–2,357 g |
| Marine reworked apatite, upper figure (abstract) | 0.1 | 1,000 | 100 | 471 g |
| Apatite, magnetite deposit, Mineville, New York, rich in rare earths (Table 5) | 0.079 | 790 | 79 | 597 g |
| Fossil bone, Miles City, Montana (Table 5) | 0.83 | 8,300 | 830 | 57 g |
| Torbernite, for scale (IMA formula, worked) | 47.15 | 471,500 | 47,150 | 1 g |
Is apatite radioactive? What the formula and the sheets say
No member of the apatite group carries uranium or thorium in its formula, so apatite is not a radioactive mineral in the way torbernite or uraninite is. Apatite is a group name: a script over the September 2026 IMA-CNMNC Master List finds no row called apatite and exactly three names containing it, chlorapatite Ca5(PO4)3Cl, fluorapatite Ca5(PO4)3F and hydroxylapatite Ca5(PO4)3(OH), each status Rn, 2010 s.p. The apatite species page explains why an unanalysed apatite is most probably fluorapatite; that argument is not repeated here.
The sheets. A search of the three Handbook sheets for radioactive, metamict, uranium, thorium, U, Th, UO2, UO3, ThO2 and U3O8 finds nothing; the same search on the uraninite sheet finds “Radioactive.” and its uranium formula. The fluorapatite sheet does print a trace analysis, from the Gloserheia pegmatite, Froland, Norway: RE2O3 0.28%, as Y2O3 0.10%, Nd2O3 0.06%, Gd2O3 0.06% and Yb2O3 0.06%. That is rare earths, not uranium or thorium. Its luminescence line, may be cathodoluminescent, phosphorescent, or fluorescent in UV, is about light, and is covered on is apatite fluorescent.
Where the boundary sits. A formula answers what a mineral is made of; it does not say what traces a real crystal has picked up. For those, the source is analysis, and for apatite the classic set is the USGS’s.
How much uranium is in apatite? The USGS figures
“Apatite contains only traces of uranium”: the first line of the abstract of Altschuler, Clarke and Young (1958), USGS Professional Paper 314-D. The paper, which concerns work done on behalf of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission, says uranium typically makes up 0.001 to 0.01 percent of primary igneous apatite and 0.005 to 0.02 percent of sedimentary marine apatite, and that marine reworked apatite becomes enriched to as much as 0.1 percent. It proposes that uranium replaces calcium in the apatite structure, notes that tetravalent uranium (0.97 Å) and divalent calcium (0.99 Å) have virtually identical ionic radii, and says the uranium is disseminated rather than locally concentrated, with phosphate deposits essentially devoid of uranium minerals.
The authors’ own summary of the range. After their Table 5 they write that uranium in apatite materials as a group varies from barely detectable traces to the concentration of a minor constituent, approaching 1 percent, but that the level is of the order of 0.00X to 0.03 percent, a range that “may be taken to embrace the great bulk of apatite in the lithosphere”, with departures from it unusual and examples of special history.
Thorium. The same paper says available analyses of igneous apatite show three or four times more thorium than uranium, and that thorium is virtually absent in fossil bone or sedimentary apatite. It gives that as a ratio; this page does not convert it into a thorium figure for any specimen.
The trace ladder: how apatite compares with torbernite
An apatite at the top of the USGS igneous range, 0.01% uranium, holds the uranium of 1 g of torbernite in about 4.7 kg of crystal. The torbernite formula on the IMA list, Cu(UO2)2(PO4)2(H2O)4·8H2O, works out at 47.15% uranium by mass, the figure on is torbernite radioactive. Dividing torbernite’s uranium fraction by each USGS percentage gives the mass of apatite with the same uranium: 4,715 g at 0.01%, 47,148 g at 0.001%, and 2,357 g at the 0.02% top of the marine range. In parts per million the igneous range is 10 to 100 ppm.
Two named specimens in the USGS table. Table 5 lists fluorapatite from a magnetite deposit at Durango, Mexico, at 0.0009% uranium, and from an alkali syenite at Renfrew, Ontario, at 0.0022%. Durango and Renfrew County both appear on the fluorapatite sheet’s list of localities for fine crystals; this page does not claim that any particular specimen matches the USGS samples, only that those are the printed figures.
What the ladder is not. It compares mass fractions of uranium. It is not a dose, an activity or a count rate, and none of those can be read from it. A trace of uranium is a measurable quantity; whether a specimen registers on a detector depends on the specimen and the instrument, and that is the subject of is my mineral radioactive.
When does the answer change? Fossil bone, phosphorite and rare-earth apatite
Documented failure: the word apatite on a label does not cover fossil bone or every phosphorite. The USGS abstract says isolated fossil bones or phosphate pebbles may contain almost one percent of uranium as a result of ground-water enrichment. Its Table 5 gives a mammalian fossil bone from Miles City, Montana, at 0.83%, and a conodont-fragment sample from Khouribga, Morocco, at 0.079%. At 0.83% the torbernite-equivalent mass falls from kilograms to about 57 g.
Rare-earth-rich apatite. The same table gives apatite from a magnetite deposit at Mineville, New York, at 0.079% uranium, which the paper says is not properly igneous in origin, is exceedingly high in rare earths and has many inclusions; it excludes that material when it gives 0.001 to 0.012 percent as the range for the igneous apatites it analysed. The text reports that apatite from Mineville may contain as much as 0.38% thorium, citing McKeown and Klemic (1956).
The working answer. On the USGS figures, a crystallised igneous apatite carries uranium at 10 to 100 parts per million; a fossil bone, a reworked phosphate pebble or a rare-earth-rich apatite can carry up to hundreds of times more. Other pages on this question for different minerals take different routes: is baryte radioactive turns on radium, and is amazonite radioactive on potassium-40. Storage questions are on how to store radioactive mineral specimens. This page is not health, safety or radiation-protection advice; for workplace questions the route is HSE and a radiation protection adviser. Related guides are at the collecting guides. Nothing on this site is offered for sale; the wanted list is the only commercial route.